McDonald’s Pushes Mobile Commerce in Austria

McDonald’s Mac on the move, anyone?

McDonald’s has never been one to just lie down and let other companies pass it by, but it’s understandable that it isn’t always at the forefront of the fast food industry due to its monolithic size. So, it’s interesting to see that McDonald’s proving to be the best example of how businesses can accept mobile payments, and morph their business into a multi-channel approach that embraces the mobile commerce market. At least, that’s the case in Austria, where it’s launched the Quick Mac mobile app to allow customers to order food ahead and pay via smartphone.

The Quick Mac app stands ahead of previous efforts by those golden arches because it combines the functionality of ordering ahead, taking payments, providing offers, using push notifications and making use of geolocation to help you get to your nearest McDonald’s sooner.

While the multitude of payment options provided by the Quick Mac app is perfect for most consumers, allowing them to use a card of their choice, PayPal or Pay Box, it’s Quick Mac’s opportunity to build customer loyalty that’s most interesting.

Using built in maps and GPS, Quick Mac can get users nearest store location and knowingly head there with an offer stored in their phone and know that they won’t even have to wait to grab their order thanks to purchasing it on the way. Users can go into the store and grab their order from a designated area, or if they don’t even fancy getting out of the car, they can pick something up quickly from the drive-thru window. There’s nutritional information available on everything McDonald’s sells, so calorie counters or the health concious can take a look any time for foods that might satisfy that McDonald’s itch without breaking the belt. And those push notifications bring offers, coupons and promotions right to a users phone, reducing the need for costly marketing campaigns to entice people in.

However, this is just one example of what McDonald’s is doing around the world. Thailand and Singapore have the McDelivery service, which is now paired with a mobile-enabled POS service. And one particular region in the US has McDonald’s integration to loyalty app Front Flip, while the company is also working with Isis on a mobile payment system trial.

For now though, if you live in Austria, you can get a complete mobile commerce experience with McDonald’s – provided you have an iOS or Android device that is.